


All Quiet

by CSIGurlie07



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/CSIGurlie07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the trenches of a war that spanned the globe, she found peace. Set in WWI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Her decision to offer her surgical skills to the war office is less for the good of the Sanctuary network than it is for her own personal convictions.

All the houses are stable and secure in their respective locations, so James felt their effort would be better put into food drives and volunteering at the local hospitals. But Helen argues that they, more than anyone, were obligated to put forth their full effort to work towards a favorable outcome to the war. If the Allied Powers fell, then it would be they, with their enhanced DNA, who would be enduring the future that inevitably would follow.

James points out her logic only holds true if they live to see whatever future they create.

In the end, they agree to disagree, because James can't bear the thought of parting while at odds, and she is unwilling to depart without bidding him farewell.

It is easier than she thought it would be, to get the War Office to send her to the front. They're in desperate need of for medical personnel, especially in the field, and the Prime Minister is aware of her skills.

She is on a convoy to the front by the end of the week.

Her orientation is two weeks spent in the triage tents on the Western Front, somewhere in the depths of France. She amputates two legs and one right arm in her first two days. The tents stink of rotting flesh and waste, and it's nearly more than she can bear.

She is glad for her rotation on the convoy sent to the trenches to collect the injured.

But once there, she takes one look at the chaos and the lines of abandoned dead and dying before she hops out of the back of the truck. Her fellow medical officers try to usher her back into the cab, but she is already rolling up her sleeves and shouting orders.

Within moments order begins to set in, as the injured are organized by the severity of their injuries and those with non-lethal injuries are ushered back into the shelter of the trenches.

The unit currently on trench duty is already on the tail end of their rotation. They are exhausted and haggard, and she meets the muddied field officer, a captain, for a brief moment before they are interrupted by a volley of artillery fire that left Helen's ears ringing.

She remains in the trenches until the next rotation comes in—she then escorts the rest of her injured back to the triage tents while the healthy return to base camp to rest until their next shift.

She doesn't see the captain again until after she has joined the company at the base camp. Though simple, it comes as a welcome reprieve from the blood, mud, and grime of the battlefront. She's bathed, finally, and dressed in a fresh set of fatigues when she literally runs into the young officer.

He is clean for the first time since their brief meeting in the trenches three days ago, and she notices he has a broad, jaunty smile and bright brown eyes. His hair is dark and damp from his own attempts to wash, and he is dashing despite his rumpled uniform.

Their exchange is brief, but she finds herself engaged in spite of herself.

Later that night, he offers to escort her to the mess area for evening rations.

She accepts.


	2. Chapter 2

When the unit is deployed once more for their next rotation in the trenches, she goes with them. This time, she sees the captain often. He keeps up morale with raunchy tales, accompanied by a wink in her direction when he discovers her eavesdropping.

He makes a point to make conversation with her in the lulls between charges.

At first, their words are cordial and polite, even as they crouch in the trenches, as she is still very much a civilian and he very much an officer. The other men are similarly cautious of her—it has been a long time since many of them have seen a woman. She reminds the younger men of their mothers, and to the older men she is an easy target.

The captain's frequent visits dispel both crowds.

As months pass, she remains a fixture in their trench rotations and saves more lives than she loses. She slowly transforms into something more soldier than civilian, and the captain's visits become less for her protection and more of an honest friendship that has grown between them.

More than that, the other soldiers in the unit come to accept her as one of their own. Every so often she hears of scuffles that have broken out because a new recruit made the mistake of voicing a crude comment about her within earshot of one of her boys.

And they are hers, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

When away from the trenches, she often puts in shifts in the triage tents, and more than once she emerges exhausted from a surgery to find a gaggle of them waiting, bearing food and water for her, and a pack of cards for them. They need something to keep themselves occupied while they keep her company, after all— to make sure she actually eats.

But the closer she gets to all of them, the more she lets herself accept their trust, the harder it becomes to do her job.

The fight grows more frantic, and more casualties weigh on her conscience when she cannot save them all. Sometimes, she is pleased she no longer flinches at the gunfire and explosions of landmines, since her focus improves with her hardened senses, but most times she feels it comes at too high a price.

Four months into her service, they drag one of their youngest men back into the trenches after one of their charges. It is a failed attempt, and the boy of barely seventeen pays the price when shrapnel nearly tears him in half.

The others leave her to work on him, finding chores to keep their attention elsewhere. The boy is sobbing, his screams haunting, as his blood fills the trench. But that isn't enough. She is bent over him when the German retaliatory charge comes—in the chaos that follows, a German nearly overruns her position.

She grabs the boy's pistol on instinct and fires, and the German dies without fanfare, save for the dull thud of something dense falling to the floor of the trench.

It's a live grenade.

Reflex has her scooping it up before she's even fully comprehended the situation, and she lobs it back over the wall. But it detonates too soon, too close, and the entire wall comes pouring down on them. Helen throws herself over her patient, saving him from the worst of the mud and debris.

They are pinned beneath the rubble, and in the dark, she urges him to keep talking to her. And he does, as she feels her way to his wounds, and tries to work with what little room she has. He tells her of his family—as the third of as many sons, and another four sisters, he enlisted to send his wages home every month.

He tells her he wishes he could see his mother one last time.

The others have them out of the mudslide in less than twenty minutes, but the damage is done.

For the first time, she leaves the trenches before her boys do, riding in the infirm convoy with her dying soldier. She sits with him in the triage tents, having done all she can. He is patched up, but there is a shortage of blood, and she knows he won't last the night.

When he finally passes in the early hours of the next morning, she is the one to bestow one last kiss upon his brow—for his mother is not there to do the honors.

She leaves his body to the nurses, and goes to find the others, who by then were back from the trenches as well. They are waiting outside the tent, lingering on the edge of the forest. Their heads lift as she approaches—she meets the captain's eyes, and gives a single shake of her head.

Her heart breaks a little more when a dozen faces fall, and another handful of men storm off to vent their anger elsewhere. Her hand gently touches the captain's shoulder briefly as she passes.

She doesn't know if the gesture is more for his benefit or her own.

It's only later that she realizes she's killed for the first time in pure instinct. She doesn't like the loss of control, and it hits her harder than the death of Adam Worth. Coupled with the loss of the boy who missed his mother, she finally breaks down and cries.

The captain finds her in her tent, and that night he holds her until she's sobbed herself to sleep.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

Six months in, they receive a new addition, and he instantly puts the others on edge.

In some ways he reminds Helen of Nikola, the way he antagonizes everyone around him. But Nikola had never had an edge so dark, despite his acerbic wit that was only honed by his transformation. This man is despised by every soldier in the unit, and she doesn't like the way his eyes follow her.

One night, he corners her when she goes to clean up by the river.

He has her pinned to a tree before she can even call out, and large calloused hands work their way into her blouse. Panic nearly takes over, but then she recovers with a swift knee to his groin.

It takes him by surprise, and it's a solid hit—she thinks she might have felt something crunch. But before she can escape his fist slams into her face once, twice… and before he limps away he swings his booted foot into her ribs as she lay gasping for air.

The captain is the first to see her the next day. He notices her stiff movements first, as he approaches her from behind. When she turns, he sees her bruised cheek and split lip—she sees the concern flash across his features.

She doesn't tell him what happened, but he comes to his own conclusion when her assailant eyes her from across the mess tent. He isn't the only one who notices when she suddenly finds new interest in her tray, and the rest of the men are able to put two and two together.

All it takes is one shared look between them for all to stand as one, their faces masks of undisguised rage.

She stops them with a single word. But they don't sit until she shakes her head, silently asking them to let it go. She doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled. Besides— they see enough violence in the trenches without perpetuating it within the ranks.

But she doesn't say anything when she finds herself with a rotating guard, ensuring she is never alone in the camp. When she washes, they respectfully disappear into the tree line, but she can see their silhouettes lingering within earshot.

Their next shift in the trenches, she is brought the corpse of her assailant. The official word is that he was slain by an enemy bayonet, but no one else is injured. She doesn't ask why a German saw fit to gore him through the groin as well as his neck. She tries to feel surprised, shocked, or horrified.

She isn't.

Later that night, it's the captain who runs a hand over her shoulder—she covers it with her own for a long moment, accepting the small solace he offers in the simple touch.

The body is collected the next day when the injured are trucked back to the main base. She watches as it's loaded into the truck, but once the vehicle is out of sight, the man is out of her thoughts. A shout in the distance alerts them all to the Germans' coming charge.

War goes on.


	4. Chapter 4

It's almost a year before the captain steals a kiss.

It's not difficult for him to do—she lets him have it with a minimum of fuss. He whispers in her ear, his breath tickling her neck. It's the first time she's let anyone close after John, the first time she's trusted enough, and she cherishes the warmth he sparks within her.

They keep it simple, for that's the only way it can be, in an army camp in the middle of the French wilderness. They follow their own version of a courtship; he escorts her to meals when they're not in the trenches, and some nights they spend hours talking beneath the light of the moon and the faint thunder of artillery in the distance.

Sometimes, during these talking sessions, it is glaringly obvious how young he is. He has hopes and dreams, and slowly she hears herself become a part of them.

He talks about after the war, and families and marriage. He hints that she is a part of those plans, and it sparks a pain in her heart, remembering her past, but his happiness is contagious. She lets herself believe for a moment that she is normal, and that she could actually live her life with him.

It's months of this abridged ritual, and an increase of casualties and losses in the trenches, before they allow themselves to breach the physical barrier between them. He's respected her until then, but they both need the release, the comfort of knowing they aren't alone.

No one blinks twice when neither of them emerge from his tent until just before reveille.

But after that, she notices that when she is late joining them around the fire at nights, the seat beside the captain mysteriously becomes available—but the same could not be said vice versa. When the captain is late joining them, they make him work for his seat next to her.

It's a subtle, good-natured competition that leaves her smiling, and the captain cuffing the boys on the back of the head. But it's their way of warning him too, and it's a warning he takes to heart.

He treats her like a queen, as much as one can in the middle of a war. He's gentle, and devoted, and she remembers the early days with John.

One day, she nearly runs from him, from them, when past becomes present.

She bears witness to him slitting a German's throat when they run into a patrol on their rounds. It's brutal and violent, and she feels the icy, bitter fear creep into her at the similarity the scene bears to a dark street in Whitechapel.

But she knows it's not the same. He feels it, is shaken and sickened by the discovery of what he is capable of. There is guilt and self-disgust, and stunned disbelief. And it is his reaction to the killing that reminds her that he is not the Ripper.

That night, she is the one to comfort him as he sobs.


	5. Chapter 5

It gets harder to hold the line in the trenches. More often than not, any advance they earn is taken back again before their shift is out. More than that, conditions in the trenches deteriorate. She herself contracts a healthy dose of trench foot, and she loses one man to a gangrene he never brought to her attention. It may have begun as a splinter, but by the time they find his body his arm is black and covered with lesions.

After that, she makes personal inspections of each and every man on a regular basis, and a thorough tongue lashing leaves them chastised and repentant on behalf of the dead man. But the extra inspections take up time and energy, leaving her just a little more exhausted by the time they finish their shifts in the trenches.

The captain worries for her, when she joins him at the evening fire nearly dead on her feet. But she refuses to slow down, because she knows what can happen if she does. She's already seen too many die—she won't lose any more just because she's a little tired.

Eventually, she becomes accustomed to the increased workload, and it becomes par for the course. Besides, she mastered the art of sleeping whenever and wherever possible months before, and she recoups some of her energy.

Just in time, it seems, to face the next set of problems.

Rations fall short as the war progresses; she and the captain are left to orchestrate foraging parties to scavenge what they can from the surrounding areas. The Germans must suffer similar shortages, because more than once they engage an enemy patrol while searching for resources.

More men fall in no man's land. Shells and mines take their toll, and against the captain's better judgement, she is the one leading recovery teams into the open to take back their dead and wounded.

She also makes a point to treat anyone who finds themselves in their section of trench, including men from neighboring units and prisoners of war. More than once, she oversees trades to exchange the German wounded for their own.

Over time, the Germans learn her face, and she finds respect in their eyes when they meet in the middle. They are haunted too, and seem to recognize the healer in her.

Somehow, it reassures her, reminds her that humanity wasn't as lost as she'd feared.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

Almost two years after she leaves London, a summer squall hits. Rain falls for weeks, and it obscures everything from view. They can barely see a foot in front of them, but still the fighting continues, as best they can manage. The trenches fill with mud and pneumonia sets in—even she falls ill with a nasty cough, but she refuses to be left behind at the camp when they go off to battle.

It's the start of the second week of rain when the world she's made for herself comes crashing down.

She is bandaging a man's hand after an encounter with barbed wire when her captain is dragged back into the trench. Her stomach drops out from under her when she sees the large, gaping wound in his gut, and the pale pink of intestines spilling through the laceration.

She is numb with fear when she kneels beside him, her hands working with mindless, practiced ease. Bandages, water, sutures… It runs together as she sees his pale face, and his trembling hands as he tries to put himself together. His breaths come in small panicked gasps, and beneath her fingers his pulse is weak and erratic.

Her hand stills his when he tries to gather his organs back into place—she needs to clean the wound first. She must look terrified, she realizes, when his features soften into a comforting smile. But it has the opposite effect, and it scares her even more.

It's bad isn't it, he breathes. His voice quakes involuntarily, and it damn near stops her heart.

"I can save you," she tells him, gripping his hand tightly. "But you have to fight. Stay with me. _Please_."

But he's already accepted his fate—maybe even welcomes it. The past years have taken their toll, and he's lost almost as much as she has.

His lips curl into his smile, and his eyes grow warm despite the chill of the growing dusk. A shaky hand reaches out to caress her cheek, his thumb rubbing gently across her skin. It's sticky with blood, but she can barely feel it through the rain.

He whispers something, but she can't hear it past the roaring in her ears. He's is looking deep into her eyes when the light leaves his own, and then it is her hand keeping his fingers pressed to her numbed cheek.

Her tears mingle with the blood and the rain, and she sits with him in her lap for as long as she can.

But then the next charge is met, and she leaves him in the mud to tend to the fresh wave of injured. He is not their only loss that day, but his is the only one she feels.

The next time she meets the gaze of a German in no man's land is the first time she feels something besides the bitter sadness for the senseless violence.

She is angry, has to force herself to focus on the wounded instead of the fury that whispers for her to shoot them all where they stand.


	7. Chapter 7

After the captain's death, the overwhelming burden of war settles squarely on all of their shoulders.

They don't smile, and they don't laugh. But they do close ranks when a new commanding officer is shipped in, fresh out of London.

He doesn't approve of Helen's presence in the trenches—not fitting for a lady, he says. But she doesn't answer to him, as she is still officially a civilian, so she continues to do her job. She cares for her men, as devotedly as the new commander should, but doesn't.

And when he tries to freeze her out, attempts to isolate her from the unit—her men freeze _him_ out.

He doesn't care at first that he remains outside the insular group. But as the reality of the trenches sinks in, he begins to. They all need the human contact, the camaraderie, to keep themselves sane, and he is no different.

But he's lost his chance to make nice.

He burns out in barely three months, and one night only Helen's timely interference keeps him from pulling the trigger on the pistol he'd put in his mouth.

He's shipped home the next week, and Helen takes the opportunity to pull a string or two to get her captain's second-in-command promoted.

It's a good decision, she finds. He takes the promotion to heart, and he fills the hole in their family with raunchy tales and hearty songs from home. Morale lifts, and in many ways he is everything the captain was.

In all ways but one.

He isn't _her_ captain.

Now she cries alone, in the privacy of her own tent. She throws herself into her work, both in the trenches and in the triage tents. Her captain isn't there to notice, and it's weeks before she collapses from exhaustion on her way back to her tent.

She wakes to gentle words of comfort, and warm arms carrying her to the medical tents. She recognizes the deep voices, and trusts in them implicitly as her vision returns to blessed darkness.

It's only then her boys resume their protective vigil over her, to ensure she eats and rests. Two of them are always there, hovering casually to keep an eye on her, even when she is released to normal duty.

She lashes out at them only once, when the grief and exhaustion becomes too much.

But it's more than them returning a favor, for all the care she's given them all these years. She probably wouldn't have accepted their concern, if that had been all it was.

He would never forgive them if they let her run herself into the ground, they tell her. She's family, and they look after their own.

It's only then that she starts to heal. It's only then that she realizes she's gained more than she's lost.

She's lost another lover, yes, one she even considered making a life with. And yes, she's lost so many of her boys as well.

But they are still _her_ boys—she trusts them, all of them, and that is a miracle in and of itself.

She'd thought she lost the capacity for love and trust that fateful night in Whitechapel, when her heart had been dashed to pieces. But one army captain had worked his way into her frozen her heart, and reminded her that despite her unnatural life, she was still human.

She loves again, against all odds, and she is loved in return.


	8. Chapter 8

She lets the men care for her, and her world ceases its long spiral out of control. She regains an even keel, and finds comfort in the simple, yet profound trust that exists among the unit. In return, she bestows gentle gestures in a squeeze of the shoulder here, a pat to the back there.

It's almost seven months after his death before she laughs again.

One soldier comes to her at the base camp, red-faced and stiff. There's no visible damage, and she can't figure out why his escorts are sniggering behind their hands.

He mumbles something unintelligible by way of explanation, and so she merely raises a stern brow, silently waiting for him to come clean.

Just show her, his tormentors urge.

The man hesitates for one last moment before he executes an about face and, without any further ado, proceeds to drop his trousers.

They are long beyond the point of modesty now, so the flush to Helen's cheeks is less a result of the sudden indecency than it is an effort not to grin at the hundred or so tiny thorns firmly embedded in the man's backside.

Going after berries, the others inform her gladly, he'd tripped and ended up sitting in a thorn bush.

The soldier in question mutters something in his defense, and the whole situation is so utterly absurd that the laughter bubbles from her lips without bidding.

She is nearly as surprised as they are by her sudden mirth, but she can't stop and it's barely a moment before the others are joining in.

The laughter lasts for a blessed, indeterminable moment, and it takes a while for her to compose herself enough to tend her miserable patient. But she is painstakingly gentle, taking her time to ensure she removes each and every barb from his abused derriere.

Once done, she sends him off with a salve and a kiss to the cheek, whispering a thank you in his ear.

He grins bashfully, and gives a solemn nod.

He understands.


	9. Chapter 9

The rest of the war is bittersweet.

It's a series of give-and-take moments, and some days it seems they take one step forwards only to be forced three steps back. But they are almost whole once again and that eases the hurt just enough to make it all bearable.

She is the best field surgeon on the front, she's told, and she does succeed in saving many lives even when under heavy artillery fire. But each victory over death digs a little deeper into the well of guilt inside her, reaffirming that she could've saved _him_ , but hadn't.

And that makes it hurt a little bit more.

When the war ends, it's abrupt and takes them all by surprise. At the front, little has changed. They are still bone-tired and hungry, and they have been looking at the same stretch of trench for the past three months.

But suddenly they aren't needed anymore, and they are sent home with little more than a pat on the back and enough memories to fuel a lifetime of nightmares.

Most of her boys are shipped to London, and she rides the train with them, in favor of accepting the private transportation offered to the other medical personnel. The boys are raucous and triumphant, but they all try to hide their apprehension at the thought of returning to lives that were no longer theirs.

She would be lying she claimed she didn't feel that same apprehension. She's changed, she knows, and after having been the same person for so long, she wonders if James will still know her.

Her old friend is waiting for her on the platform when they reach London—she spies him the moment she disembarks. He smiles, and she tries to do the same, but she knows it's weak. And she doesn't immediately go to him, but rather waits until her men are all on the platform with her.

They linger hesitantly, unsure of how to say goodbye.

In the end, it's the man she once pulled thorns from who steps up to her and wraps her in a fierce, tender embrace. This time, he's the one to whisper words of gratitude.

When he pulls away, there is another man waiting to take his place, and even more lined up behind him. She hugs them all, exchanging soft words of promises to keep in contact, and affable efforts to appear less emotional than they are.

The new captain waits until he is the last, and he pulls her close—she knows it is meant to be from him and his predecessor both.

She accepts it.

She tells him how proud she is—how honored.

The happy pride that brightens his eyes makes him years younger, though he is already a mere child compared to her. On the front they were all the same age, but now, if she were to guess, he is truly no more than twenty-five.

They part ways there on the platform, and she finally makes her way to James, who is still waiting patiently. There is some unreadable expression in his eyes—when had she lost the ability to see his thoughts as clearly as her own?

He is faced with a similar quandary, it seems, because while his welcome is warm, it is painfully polite.

But he earns a smile from her when he takes her hand in his and bestows a chaste kiss in a winking parody of the old ways.

She retaliates by shocking him with a playful reprimand peppered with some of the more colorful vocabulary she's learned from the boys.

And just like that, the icy uncertainty is broken. They return home to the Sanctuary, and she resumes her father's work almost too easily.

Things have changed. _She_ has changed, and more than once James gets a look in his eye that tells her she's surprised him by acting in some manner that is in direct contradiction to the Helen he'd known for forty years.

But he continues to love her, and she loves him, just as she always had.


	10. Chapter 10

She spends the next months in London, dealing with the fallout of the war and the resulting political tensions after the Versailles Treaty is put into effect. It makes international networking difficult in Europe, and she focuses on re-forging her connections across the continent, using the London House as a hub.

She keeps in touch with nearly half of her men in that time. Some she even runs into while on errands in town. But as the years pass they drift away from her, and the only ones she receives letters from are the ones whose injuries were the most severe during the war.

They tell her what has become of the lives she saved, how they have grown, started their own families, and all those who write invite her to come visit—they want their families to know her.

But she doesn't ever accept. It would be too difficult, too hard to explain why she hasn't aged a day.

It warms her heart, though, to know they still think of her.

But even the satisfaction of those letters is tempered by the simple gray stone standing guard over a private corner of the Sanctuary's garden. She can't bear to look at it most days—when she does pay her respects, more often than not it's in the dead of a sleepless night.

James never asks about her relationship she shared with the dead captain, but she was sure he'd deduced the truth in his own. He'd followed her instructions regarding the captains' burial without question, and she remained forever grateful for that—even long after her old friend passed.

With no family to send his body home to, she'd refused to let her captain's body join the other abandoned corpses in the one of the many, impersonal military plots. She'd shipped the pine box home to the London house, with a note to James promising to explain everything in due time.

But her lover would not be the only captain to grace the Sanctuary.

Almost five years after the end of the war, Helen is hunting a wayward Abnormal through a London alley when she runs headlong into a haggard drunk. She almost blows past him in her impatience, but something about him makes her pause.

It's the captain she'd last seen on the train platform, and last heard from over three years ago.

He's a mess, stinking of booze, vomit, and filth, and he doesn't recognize her in his stupor. But it doesn't matter. She's already slipped into the role that has been second nature to her, even before the war. She sends the rest of her hunting party after the Abnormal, and takes the captain back to the Sanctuary.

She cares for him, until he is sober enough to do so himself.

When he is clean and coherent, he recognizes her. But it's several days before he realizes she _shouldn't_ be looking exactly as she had the last time he'd laid eyes on her.

In the meantime, she learns that he has not been able to get over the war. His only family is an elderly mother who no longer recognizes him, and the army is all he knows, having enlisted straight out of school.

He's been abandoned by an army that no longer needs him, and forgotten by a people who'd lost interest in its heroes. He'd lost himself, and had no one to look for him.

Until now.

She offers him a room in the Sanctuary, first as a guest until he can get back on his feet, and later as permanent personnel when he demonstrates an affinity for handling the chaos that comes with the care and study of the Abnormal world.

The work gives him the direction he needs, and he flourishes in his new role, just as he had when he received his field promotion. He doesn't drink another drop, and ends up meeting his wife a few years later. When the next war ravages the globe, he remains behind to run the Sanctuary while she once again jumps headfirst into the war effort.

Once again, Helen knows she made a good decision in putting her confidence in him.

What she does not know is that his devotion to the Sanctuary would trickle down through generations—she has no idea his grandson would one day become the head of the London house.

When he dies in his sleep at the ripe old age of eighty-two, he is laid to rest beside his commanding officer.

His gravestone reads Robert Declan McCrae.

He was a dear friend, a trusted officer, a beloved husband… and an even better father. This time, she is there to witness the interment and it feels right.

She hears the eulogy, and offers her own words in the memory of the man who has been in her family since their days in the trenches. But even as she speaks, her thoughts wander to the man she'd lost more than fifty years ago.

She still misses him, and every now and then she feels the familiar pang of hurt when she remembers his touch, his voice. But it doesn't ache so much anymore, and the guilt has faded. Instead, she feels blessed to have been there when his time had come—he hadn't been alone.

Sometimes, it's all one can hope for.

It was something she couldn't guarantee for herself. But she'd been there for him, and she lived to remember, along with two dozen men who lived as a result of his leadership.

She still loves him.

After Robert is laid to rest, it is easier to visit them both. She tries to make a point to visit them once a month, but life gets in the way, and when she ultimately moves her base of operations to Old City, she settles for once a year.

So each year she returns to London, and spends the day sitting in the garden. She lingers well into the night, and many times she ends up laying flat on her back, staring at the stars just as she had in France.

And just as she had in France, she lies beside the dashing captain who warmed her heart.


End file.
